Australian Dingo Facts

Australian dingo was
originally an
introduced animal.

As Australian as dingo may sound, it is not a native animal in
Australia. Dingo was introduced to Australia about 5,000 years ago from
South-east Asia, and is thought to have evolved from Indian wolf.
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Dingo Fence, aka Dog Fence
It is
now found in most of mainland Australia, except in areas in New
South Wales, South Australia and Western
Australia where it is kept out by the Dingo Fence, as long as 6000km.
Its absence in Tasmania
(and red fox’s) has saved Tasmanian
Devil that got extinct on mainland since
dingo was introduced.

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The Wild Dog
Australian Dingo (Canis lupus dingo)
is a dog-looking animal that is most often ginger in colour but you can
exceptionally see a black or white dingo. They grow up to 1220mm long
and weigh up to 24kg. They breed between April and June and give birth
to 1-10 pups about 60 days after mating. Baby dingo puppies are very
cute but Australian dingo is not a suitable pet animal.

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Dingo Habitat
Dingos live in all
terrestrial habitats like forests, woodlands, heath and grasslands.
They eat reptiles, birds, mammals, insects and in coastal areas, fish.
They are mostly nocturnal and very territorial. They mark
the boundaries of their territories and male dingo defends its
territory so groups seldom cross boundaries. The size of the territory,
and the size of a pack, depend on the quality of habitat. The more
resources there are, the smaller the territory, and the smaller the
pack.

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What Do Dingos Eat?
Dingo is the largest
carnivorous land animal in Australia, and it eats all other animals it
can get. Wild dingos often hunt alone, but for larger prey like big kangaroos
pack-hunting is needed. Dingo
lives up to seven years old.

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Pets of Aborginal People
When dingos were brought to Australia by Asian seafarers, Aboriginal
people adopted them as guards and
companions, and dingoes still appear in Aboriginal stories and art.

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Dingo Attacks
Dingo is often hated because it kills both livestock and
native Australian
animals,
and because of a few attacks that have happened on people.

Death
of Azaria Chamberlain

The
most famous dingo attack happened in 1980 at Uluru (Ayers Rock), when
the two months old

Azaria Chamberlain went missing on a
family
camping trip.

Her
parents reported her missing and said she'd been taken by a dingo from
their tent. Both were charged and spent three years in prison, until in
1986, a piece of Azaria's clothing was found in a dingo lair.

The
long case was completely finalised as late as in 2012, when it was
finally decided it was a dingo that took the baby. The case is one of
the most famous ones in Australian history, and got a lot of media
coverage. The movie "A Cry in the Dark" was based on
the story, and many
books have been written, by her both parents as well as other authors.

But many
people argue that livestock doesn’t make up more than 2% of its diet,
and that dingo doesn’t affect native ecosystems because it
has been in Australia for so long that native animals have had time to
adapt evolutionary to a predator like dingo. Attacks on people have
only happened because dingo looks like a dog and it’s easy
to forget that it is a wild animal. In places where people have fed
them, they lose their fear of humans and may attack, particularly kids.

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Places to See Australian Dingo
Love them or hate them, they do bring in some tourist dollars and good
places to see them in the wild are Fraser
Island in Queensland,
Uluru-Kata
Tjuta National Park in Northern
Territory, and Lake Eyre in South
Australia. Dingo is also found in most of Australian zoo
parks.

Using this Website

Note:
This site uses
British English, which is the English we use in Australia. You will
find words like "traveller", "harbour" and "realise", and they are all
correct in the language used in Australia.

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